For over seven decades, it has been widely accepted that Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand, accompanied by his Nepalese-Indian sherpa Tenzing Norgay, were the pioneers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
In 1953, they made history by achieving what no one before them had – reaching the pinnacle of the world’s highest mountain, which stands at 29,032 feet.
Yet, 29 years earlier, a British expedition witnessed 37-year-old mountaineer George Mallory and 22-year-old Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine departing from camp on June 8, 1924.
The duo never returned, and there was no evidence to confirm their summit success, although some explorers speculate they could have achieved it before perishing on their descent.
Irvine planned to document their ascent with a Kodak pocket camera, while Mallory intended to leave a photograph of his wife Ruth at the summit as proof of their achievement.
When they failed to return to camp, it was presumed by the mountaineering community that they had fallen to their deaths.
It wasn’t until nine years later that Irvine’s ice axe was found by Hugh Ruttledge, the leader of another British expedition.
Ruttledge later noted: “Firstly it seems probable that the axe marked the scene of a fatal accident.
“For reasons already given, neither climber would be likely to abandon it deliberately on the slabs… its presence there would seem to indicate that it was accidentally dropped when a slip occurred or that its owner put it down in order to have both hands free to hold the rope.”
It wasn’t until 1999 that Mallory’s body was located by mountaineers – his wife’s picture was absent, and his injuries suggested a fall from just 2,263 feet below the summit, hinting they might have succeeded in their climb.
One hundred years after their vanishing, a team of climbers accompanied by a film crew has made an astonishing find.
A sock, boot, and shockingly a foot, believed to belong to Irvine due to his name being stitched into the sock, were found by Oscar-winning director Jimmy Chin and a National Geographic documentary team.
Reflecting on the find, Chin said: “I lifted up the sock, and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it.”
The significance of this discovery was immediately clear to Chin, who won an Academy Award in 2019 for Best Documentary Feature with Free Solo. He described how the team was ‘literally running in circles dropping F-bombs’.
He added: “It’s the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up.”
Regrettably, Irvine’s camera has not been found, leaving the question of whether he and Mallory were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest unanswered. A DNA sample has been taken to verify his identity.